


Metamorphosis

by inkforhumanhands



Series: Daredevil Ficlets [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Exploration of Matt's Senses, Ficlet, Gen, Light Angst, Matt's childhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:54:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25908439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkforhumanhands/pseuds/inkforhumanhands
Summary: Matt’s senses didn’t develop right away.
Series: Daredevil Ficlets [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1880257
Comments: 11
Kudos: 33





	Metamorphosis

**Author's Note:**

> Does it confuse anyone else that in the show Matt's only shown having difficulty with his senses after his dad gets murdered? Anyway this is my take on it, written for the prompt "metamorphosis."

Matt’s senses didn’t develop right away. For a while he heard, smelled, tasted, and touched everything just the same as he had before his accident. The only thing different was that he could no longer see.

When they did come it was gradual, if you could use that word to describe something so sharp and painful and sudden and then gone. He didn’t know what it was. He didn’t even know it was all the same thing.

Sound was the most obvious and even then he couldn’t find a pattern. The first time it happened, he’d been lying in bed. He was about to drift off to sleep when he heard a loud bang so close it almost sounded like it happened inside his head. Startled awake, he called for his dad but was disappointed to find he hadn’t heard anything at all. They chalked it up to some dream phenomenon.

Several days passed without further incident, until one evening he was doing his homework in the kitchen. Save for the hum of the refrigerator and the whoops of a few kids passing by outside on the street, it was more or less quiet. So when the beastly snarl of an angry dog echoed in his left ear, Matt knew that whatever he was hearing wasn’t really there. He couldn’t know that it was an entire block away, but he did know that if the sound was real at all it was somewhere he shouldn’t be capable of hearing it. He didn’t say anything to his dad that time.

Inconsistency did him no favors in figuring out his other senses either. It was easy enough to write off a classmate’s peanut butter and jelly breath even several hours after lunch, or to blame the acute saltiness of his food on his dad’s cooking skills. In the end, touch smacked of oddness the most. His dad would be talking to him from more than a few feet away and Matt would feel the lightest mist settle on his exposed skin.

“Dad, where are you?”

“I’m right here.”

“No, like where are you standing? How far away are you from me?”

There was no way his dad was spitting that far talking at a normal volume from that distance. Something was up.

Soon at least once a day he was hearing something he shouldn’t be able to, and he learned not to react out loud to his own personal minefield. Someone swore as they swept up bits of a broken glass they’d dropped. Matt raised his hand to answer a question in class. Another person yelled for “Tommy!” Matt’s fingers continued to skim across a page of Braille, uninterrupted. An ambulance siren screamed inside his head; he swallowed a bite of dinner.

The smells of the city made him nauseous. A garbage truck turning the corner towards him flooded his mouth with particles of rot. The florist near his school gifted him keen headaches. Air currents tickled the hair on his arms. His pillowcase scratched at his face. Slowly, Matt amassed discomforts.

They condensed around him all at once the night his father was murdered. Whether it was the natural progression of things or the emotional trauma that tore down his last defenses against the constant onslaught of the world, he could never be sure. All he knew was that the way he perceived the world had changed, and so had he.


End file.
